A variety of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been developed, including Remote Control (RC) planes for the hobbyists, and more advanced “drones” or UAVs for other applications including commercial and military. UAV configurations, such as “quadcopter” or four-rotor configurations, have been developed for specific or general hobby, commercial, or military applications.
Controlled displacement and/or rotation of a UAV, while in flight, may allow precise UAV locating/positioning, stabilization of onboard sensors (e.g., camera sensors), ranging, odometry, indoor navigation, mapping, and the like. Generally, higher accuracy of the in-flight displacement and/or rotation of the UAV can correspond to improved functioning of other features of the UAV. Visual light cameras may perform feature detection and depth mapping, from which rotation and displacement of the UAV may be determined. However, sufficient lighting and consistency of features in the captured frames may be required for precision. Thus, low light conditions, occlusion, and dramatic scene changes may greatly impact precision of the visual techniques, and may lengthen calibration times. In addition, cameras can require high power and processing capabilities.